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Saturday, January 01, 2005
Editorial: Myths on vigilante killings
There are many reasons why wrong acts are embraced by the many, one of them being perceptions that harden into myths and getting popular display.
One can rake these myths out in the verbal exchange that is raging following the killings of people with criminal records by a shadowy group operating in Cebu City.
Eye for an eye
This is the primitive notion of crime and punishment. Aside from the fact that modern thinking has eclipsed this principle, there is the matter of its applicability as argument supporting the recent vigilante killings.
Consider the logic of a leader of a transport group who said that that he supports the killings because in his 30 years as a taxi operator, eight of his drivers have been robbed and killed.
The same point threads the many others who are clapping their hands in glee—since robbers have victimized them, their kin, friends or other people at one time or another, the “eye for an eye” principle holds.
Which is wrong, of course. Because the “eye for an eye” notion presupposes that the one who takes the eye is also the very same person whose eye will be gouged as punishment. Or the one who kills is also the same person killed.
But can the taxi operator, or the other victims of previous robberies or killings say that those who victimized them were the same persons gunned down in this killing orgy?
Also, the “eye for an eye” dictum dictates that punishment should be equal to the crime. Meaning, for a murderer, death. But can that be said of the vigilante victims?
Fear factor
The line here is that killing suspected robbers would instill fear in other people similarly inclined, which is, of course, the same argument being advanced by those who supported the death penalty law.
But fear as deterrence is a mirage and is fleeting.
While it could be true that the number of robbery incidents has gone down since the vigilante killings occurred, that will only last for as long as the fear holds or until necessity—whether poverty-induced or drug-induced—overcomes it.
This is the reason why in Davao, the laboratory of death squads as weapon against criminality, vigilantes have to murder people ever so often—almost a hundred for this year alone—because criminality has not been eradicated despite the killing orgy.
Popular support
This has provided those behind the vigilante killings with the swagger. But being popular is not necessarily being right. That was the painful lesson learned by Christ’s apostles more than 2,000 years ago.
Besides, popular thinking is fickle, meaning it shifts depending on the period. Hitler was popular at the height of his power but the very same people who idolized him would later condemn him.
That lesson should not be lost on Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña and Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte.
(January 1, 2005 issue)
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